Monthly Archives: August 2012

You probably found this blog post because you, like me, bought a OCZ Technology Vertex 4 for your MacBook Pro, and it’s giving you the spinning beach ball of death (freezes up). You probably also knew that it might have firmware updates and thought that it would be a simple update, then found that it was darn near impossible. Well, here’s what I found.

This was the method that gave me hope. I found it when I bought my Vertex 4 from Amazon (link). A reviewer gave detailed upgrade instructions, using a bootable CD made from an image downloaded from OCZ. This almost worked for me.

This method is Mac specific. It details how to create a bootable USB drive, boot into the utility, and flash the drive. I couldn’t get the .dmg image to restore to my SD card, so I’m not sure if it will upgrade you to version 1.5. Please leave comments on your success/failure.

What I did.

Back up all data. (this is a non-destructive firmware upgrade, so this shouldn’t be necessary, but I wanted to play it safe)

When you get the boot menu, select the disc, and hit “enter”. (You may have to wait a few seconds for the disc to show up as an option)

When you see the startup screen, hit “enter.” You will then boot into a lightweight version of Linux with a few menu options on the bottom. This may take a minute or so, and it may give you some warnings or errors.

Click on the “OCZ_Firmware_Current_Flash” icon on the bottom. (This is where my instructions are different than Method 1. The reviewer suggests to click on the “OCZ_Mac_Firmware_Flash” update tool, but this would never work for me. It told me to set my SATA controller to AHCI mode.)

This will open a terminal-like window. Follow the instructions. It will tell you your current firmware version (Mine started at 1.4), and then run the firmware flash program.

You’ll be prompted to restart your computer to complete.

If your firmware started at version 1.4, you’ll be updated to 1.4.1 (or something like that). You’ll need to go through the update process again to get you to firmware 1.5. Repeat steps 6 – 11.

If this method doesn’t work for you, go ahead and try the other methods. If you have a different method, post a comment.

Method 5.

Send your OCZ Vertex 4 back and get a hard drive that is more Mac friendly. I read that the Crucial SSDs work out of the box.